A 20-year-old college student’s hike with her father, which started with her crossing something off her bucket list, ended tragically earlier this month when she fell to her death from Yosemite’s Half Dome. On July 13, Grace Rohloff slipped and fell 200 feet while she and her father, Jonathan Rohloff, were descending the ropes at Yosemite’s peak, according to a report in SFGate.
Notably, hikers need to get permits ahead of time for the challenging 14-16-mile round-trip hike to Half Dome. Recalling the incident, in an interview with the outlet, her father said that she was very happy and told him that she loved him. “She told me it was something that was on her bucket list that she always wanted to do, and she was so happy about it,” he said, adding that they had hiked together for “thousands of miles” at that point.
“There’s no way 10 minutes before, when she was up there smiling ear to ear, that I thought I only had 10 minutes left with her. It was a tragedy,” he said.
Mr Rohloff told SFGate that they heard a “loud thunderclap” as soon as they arrived at the summit and realised they had to start descending right away. “A black cloud was rolling in like gangbusters. I said: ‘We have to get down now, because we can’t be up here with any rain. It rolled in literally out of nowhere,'” he said.
Grace informed him that her new hiking shoes were not providing enough traction on the route as they descended. “Dad, my shoes are so slippery,” Mr Rohloff recalled her saying. He added that he tried to calm her down and said, “OK, let’s do one step at a time.”
Then, before he realised what was going on, she slipped from his grasp and went outside of the boundary of the wires down the slope of the mountain. Mr Rohloff said, “She just slid off to the side, right by me, down the mountain. It happened so fast. I tried to reach my hand up, but she was already gone.”
He was hoping his daughter would make it. Later, he found out that Grace most likely died after striking her head on a rock, according to the outlet. Grace’s death was caused by a head fracture, according to the Mariposa County Coroner’s Office. “That was at least comforting,” he told the outlet. “If she was gone, that she didn’t have to suffer,” he added.
Grace’s family said she was an intelligent, selfless woman who loved to travel and was an excellent athlete. According to her father, her two younger siblings, Jonathan and Faith, looked up to her. “She was the star on every team she ever played on, but the 12th girl on the basketball team – Grace made that girl feel just as important. She had a way of connecting people and making them feel special,” he said.
